Mammoth Book of Best British Crime 11 Read online

  “That nutter was following us, but we couldn’t see him. He was saying bad stuff.”

  “Yeah, like ‘I’ve gotta knife and I’ll have youse all.’ What do you want to do?”

  I looked round at the group. I’d been telling them what had happened, seriously full of myself. Suddenly I didn’t want any more beer.

  “We could call police,” Sasha said.

  “They won’t be able to see the guy any better than we can,” I said. “We’d better split. We’ll all go together, women in the middle. I’ll tell them it’s an old Edinburgh tradition after boozing on the High Street.”

  Which I duly did and they accepted, the foreigners in particular buying into the invented custom. We walked quickly up to the junction at the Tron Kirk and turned down South Bridge. Four of the group caught a cab and the rest of us continued on foot, splitting away one by one as we reached our turnings. I had the furthest to go, about another half a mile.

  “I didn’t want to tell you before,” the taller of the Marks said, “but I heard the bastard again about ten minutes ago. He was saying, ‘Ma blade’s gonnae cut ye tae pieces,’ over and over.”

  “Fuck,” I exhaled.

  “Do you want me to walk you home?”

  I did, but I still retained some self-respect.

  “It’s okay. I can always make a hobble for it. See you at the class photograph tomorrow.” He gave a hollow laugh, patted me on the shoulder and set off for his place at speed.

  I looked around the empty streets and got walking before my knee stiffened any more.

  Then I heard footsteps behind me. They were getting quicker. I turned down West Mayfield, hoping there would be some traffic on Minto Street at the end. I went into the middle of the road, intending to stop any car that appeared. None did. Had Embra suddenly turned into Tumbleweed Connection? I was breathing heavily, my vision blurred. But my hearing was fine – I could hear the sprinter’s quick pace.

  “Ma blade’s gonnae cut ye tae pieces,” came his mocking voice, not loud enough to attract attention.

  The houses were all dark anyway. Even the main road ahead was more or less deserted.

  “FUCK OFF,” I yelled. “HELP.”

  “Bad move, ye shite.”

  He was on me in a split second. I felt the steel hiss of the blade near my throat and then asphalt against my face. My legs and arms were pounding at an incredible rate. I was running the fastest 100 metres of my life horizontally, but the tape was impossibly far away.

  Then there was a squeal of tyres as a car drove up at speed. The weight on my body lifted and, looking round, I saw my assailant pelting down the street.

  “Are you all right?” came a plummy male voice.

  Hands helped me to my feet.

  “Were you being robbed?” The man was heavily built and wearing a tracksuit.

  “Em, no. Well, yes.”

  “You’re confused. I’ll take you to hospital.”

  “No, I’m okay. My lodgings are just round the corner. Could you . . . could you take me?”

  “Of course. Jump in.”

  I didn’t do that as my legs had decided enough was enough, but I managed to get them into the car. In a minute I was outside the house.

  “If you could watch until I’m in the door,” I said, feeling like a twelve-year-old.

  The guy smiled. “No problem.”

  The key made scratches on the metal as I tried to get it into the hole. Finally I managed. I waved to my second saviour of the night, then pushed open the heavy door. We weren’t supposed to apply the bolt, but I wasn’t taking any chances. I stumbled up to the second floor and let myself into my room. It was at the back of the house so I couldn’t see the street. Maybe that was just as well. If Burns had hidden in the vicinity, now he knew where I lived.

  I washed my knee as best I could in the tiny basin in my room; the bath was on the first floor next to my landlady’s bedroom and I didn’t want to disturb her. Besides, the physical damage was minimal compared with the psychological. I sat at the table that served as my desk, elbows either side of the pile of printed pages that comprised my crime novel. It was full of disembowellings and eye removals, the hero a smartarse private dick solving the crime of the century while exchanging scabrous repartee with his sidekick. Now it seemed as phoney as vegetarian haggis. I couldn’t publish such a rucksack of lies, not even under a pseudonym.

  I eventually passed out on my bed wearing only my pants, not an advisable course of action in Edinburgh, even in late June. I woke up shivering and buried myself under the covers, the sun already up. I eventually came round about midday, my stomach somersaulting when I remembered the events of the previous night. The class photo was at 2 p.m. Did I have the balls to leave the house? No, I didn’t. I sat at my desk and started going through my novel, striking out the most egregious bits of flippancy. At least it took my mind off Jimmy Burns and his lifeless eyes.

  I heard the doorbell and then heavy steps come upstairs. I was the only tenant, the other guy having disappeared a month earlier without a word. There was a knock on the door.

  “You in there, mate?”

  “Mark?” A wave of relief coursed through me. I opened the door and both Marks came in.

  “So you got back all right?”

  “Yeah . . . no problem.”

  “What are you doing?”

  “Oh, fiddling with my novel.”

  “The big writer! Come on, the photo’s in half an hour. We’ll make it if we get a cab.”

  I found some reasonably clean clothes and followed them out. Even in the taxi I felt nervous. Was Burns lurking in a doorway, biding his time? Why had I dissed him like that? I didn’t know as much as I thought about psycholinguistics, and I’m not being funny about psychos – I’m talking about how the brain processes language. I’d given the sprinting thief all the wrong language and he’d processed it in a way that had almost been terminally detrimental to my health.

  We arrived in Buccleuch Place to find the staff and the rest of the class on the steps by the David Hume Tower. Many of the students broke into applause, then told the lecturers what had happened. I’m not smiling in the photo but everyone else is.

  Afterwards I declined the offer of drinks and caught the bus home. I moved out of Edinburgh a week later, having spent all my waking hours fixing my novel. At least it wasn’t the Famous Five with swearing, guts and gore by the time I’d finished. I only left the house twice, in the middle of the day, to buy food. There was no sign of my attacker, but I was still scared shitless.

  I went to stay with my old man, wrote my dissertation, got a distinction for the overall degree and, a year later, saw the publication of my novel.

  I was taken to Edinburgh for a day of interviews and photographs by my publishers. There was a lot of coverage in the local and national press, as well as on the radio. I often wonder if Jimmy Burns saw my photo above the jacket image in the Evening News.

  I’ve no doubt what he would say if he had:

  “Ma blade’s gonnae cut ye tae pieces.”

  A Time to Seek

  Alison Bruce

  Simone guessed that the balcony measured something like eight-by-three feet, the same square footage as the bathroom then, and smaller than the kitchen and the other two rooms in the flat. But as long as the sun shone like this she knew it would remain her favourite spot.

  She’d salvaged one cane chair and a matching side table from her parents’ conservatory, pushed them both out on to the balcony and every day for the last week had come home to spend the first hour of the evening watching the Cam slip by. The river was one floor below and a hundred feet away; far enough to believe that the grass was green, the water pure and people who walked its banks were at a safe distance. Even when this Indian summer gave way to the bleakness of winter she imagined she’d still sit here.

  The phone rang, she went inside and watched it flashing, Ollie’s number showed on the caller display, but she didn’t pick up. Until then the hea
t of sitting out there had almost felt too much, but now she guessed the sunshine wouldn’t be enough to prevent her feeling chilled. She poured herself a glass of orange juice, then took it and the phone and returned to the balcony, placing the phone on the table but cradling the glass in her hand.

  This glass was the sole survivor from a set of six, bought from the Sunday craft market just over a year ago. That day had been just as hot but, in the months since, almost everything had run cold, turning out to be brittle and fragile and ready to disintegrate. This glass was a rarity; there hadn’t been much she’d salvaged from her and Ollie’s old home. She guessed she could have gone back for more, fought for more, scrabbled around and come away with half a dozen more boxes of items that she could have argued as being rightfully hers.

  She still wasn’t sure why she hadn’t.

  A rowing team passed then, eight oarsmen plus the cox, pulling hard, their oars dipping in and out of the water. Focus and rhythm.

  Focus and rhythm. Two of many things that she had neglected. In fact, she suspected that this balcony was the only place where peace and order existed in her life, everything else from her closest friendship to her career potential had been choked during this long and arduous year.

  She picked up the phone and clicked down past Ollie’s number, through the received calls list to the last call of yesterday afternoon. It had been unexpected. Can you meet me at the Brunswick?

  Her gaze wandered upstream, where the bends in the river wove towards the expensive riverside apartments, towards the city centre and the pub she passed every day on the way home from work but had never stepped inside until yesterday.

  The Brunswick: a quick drink had turned into dinner. Time had shifted until early evening had become closing time and could so easily have become daybreak. Thankfully it hadn’t and her instinct today had been to avoid him until she’d had time to think, but now she decided that speaking to him might give her the answer. She found his number and pressed call.

  He answered on the second ring. “I’m glad you phoned.”

  “I wasn’t going to.”

  “I believed you when you said it. So what does this mean now?”

  She watched the rowers slip out of sight before answering. “I still don’t know. I’ve tried so hard to get myself back on track this year . . . Do you realize the mess I’d be in today if last night had gone any further?”

  He stayed silent but she could picture him, leaning forward, elbows on knees, staring down the length of the room until she was ready to speak.

  Behind her the doorbell rang but, instead of answering it, she pushed the French window shut. She wasn’t expecting anyone. And at this moment it didn’t matter who stood outside.

  “I can’t afford to get in a worse mess than the one I’m already in. Do you understand?”

  “You know I do. We’ve known each other a long time, right?”

  “Right. Enough that I can see the look on your face right now.” She half-smiled then, speaking to him hadn’t made sense of it after all. She didn’t know why she’d really expected that it might. “I need to go.”

  “Hang on, Simone. Can I see you? A drink or something?”

  “I don’t know.” She stared at the glass again, “Look, I really need to go.” Her smile had faded to nothing; what had she been thinking? “This is wrong,” she muttered. She took a breath and spoke firmly, “Don’t tell Tabby, all right? I need to get this straight in my head. I don’t want to upset her.”

  “Why would I say anything?” He’d heard the change in her tone, and she found it easy to imagine the tilt of his head, the philosophical smile then the attempt at a playful dig. “Besides, nothing happened.”

  She didn’t feel in the mood to be teased. “Nothing?” she snapped, “And I thought we were about thirty seconds away from doing it. Thanks.”

  She jabbed the red hang-up-now button and slumped back in the chair then closed her eyes for as long as it took to draw one slow breath. She needed to walk, to think, to tread carefully. She drained her glass and only then looked back towards the Cam.

  Tabby stood in her line of sight, glaring up at the balcony, her hands wedged into her jacket and her feet planted squarely. She waited until their eyes met then turned away.

  “Tabby. Wait!” Simone shouted but Tabby didn’t look back. Simone ran down the stairs and out of her flat, replaying what Tabby may have overheard with every step she took. Shit, shit, shit. But by the time she rushed outside her closest friend was nowhere to be seen.

  9.12 p.m.

  PC Sue Gully brushed the heel of her hand across her cheek. Almost two hours dealing with the aftermath of a relatively minor collision on Newmarket Road had exhausted today’s quota of goodwill towards Cambridge’s motorists – or at least the ones who felt being generally responsible citizens gave them the right to vent at each other once any delay ran to over about ten minutes.

  The second of the two damaged vehicles had finally been winched on to the tow truck and she’d watched its tail-lights disappearing into the failing daylight. The buckled lamppost – the cause of all the cordoning off and diversions – now stood only as a three-foot-high sawn-off stump. The council truck took away the rest and, finally, this call was done.

  The next came in immediately and that had been the cue for her to wipe her face, a symbolic gesture, a single moment to switch her mind from the chaos of one scene to the chaos of the next.

  Unconscious female on Riverside.

  As the last officer at this job she was almost certainly the closest and she had no doubt she’d beat the ambulance to the scene by several minutes. She activated the siren and moved into the traffic before swinging into the first of the side streets, weaving her way closer to the river. She saw no one until she approached the address despatch had given out; a group of eight or nine had gathered on the pavement outside a row of flats. They looked towards her as one. She felt her stomach tighten. They moved back enough for her to glimpse the injured woman. A heavyset man in a tracksuit spoke first. “She’s breathing I think. We put her in the recovery position.”

  Gully nodded, knelt beside the prone woman and felt for her pulse. It rippled past her fingertips. And yes, the casualty was breathing. One jacket had been draped over her legs and another over her upper body.

  “Can you hear me?” Gully asked, then leant closer and repeated herself more loudly. She looked up at the onlookers, “Step back a little please.” They were more cooperative than the early evening motorists had been and moved enough for light from the nearest street lamp to hit the woman’s dark brown hair. Blood glistened between the strands splayed on the path, a slowly swelling pool emerging from the back of her head. Gully spoke into her radio, “IC1 female, early 30s, head trauma, unconscious.”

  The radio crackled a response back at her. Tracksuit man moved closer again.

  “Do you recognize her?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know her name but she lives round here, I’ve seen her.”

  “That’s Simone.” A woman towards the back of the group had spoken. “She lives on the first floor at the other end of the block to me. Last name’s Lewis, I think.” She twisted slightly and pointed over her shoulder. Everyone’s gaze followed. The building stood about a dozen feet away and the light shone from the second-floor window, illuminating the small rectangle of the balcony.

  She spoke to Simone again. “Simone? Simone, an ambulance is coming. Just a couple of minutes. Can you hear me?” Gully slipped her fingers in and out of the front pockets of the woman’s jeans. Empty. Gully could just pick out the siren; it had to be about a mile away. “Simone?”

  She repeated the name, hoping that she could penetrate the woman’s unconsciousness, but it was still unexpected when Simone’s lips moved. Her mouth barely moved and the words were impossible to distinguish.

  “Don’t try to talk, we’ll get you in the ambulance first.”

  Simone’s eyes cracked open a fraction and the word please reached G
ully who leant forward so that her ear was closer to Simone’s mouth. The sentence began with a mumble then Simone slowed and the final words became clear. Her eyelids closed again.

  Gully felt a hand on her shoulder then and looked up to find DC Gary Goodhew standing at her side. She had no idea how long he’d been there but, as ever, she wasn’t surprised that he was. “What did she say?” he asked.

  “I couldn’t hear her clearly.”

  “Any of it?”

  “Just the last few words . . . ‘a time to die’.”

  Goodhew had been about five minutes from the end of his shift when he heard the call. He wasn’t the closest but found himself working out his arrival time and diverting in Gully’s direction instead of returning the car to Parkside.

  He arrived a couple of minutes ahead of the ambulance. Gully was tending the injured woman and the group of bystanders had already begun to disperse. One of them, a woman in her fifties, stood further back from the rest and only a few feet from the front door of the flats where the casualty lay. The woman wore unlaced shoes and a blank expression; she seemed like the best place to start. Good-hew introduced himself and gently turned her away from the scene.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Mrs Hilton. Abigail.”

  “Do you recognize her?”

  “Of course. She lives next door. But I don’t know what happened, I heard someone shouting and looked out and saw her lying on the ground. I didn’t realize it was Simone then.”

  “Do you know Simone’s last name?”

  “Lewis.”

  Goodhew pointed to the nearest balcony, “And she lives there?”

  “Yes, and I’m next door.”

  “Does she live alone?”

  “She split up with her boyfriend before she moved here. I see him sometimes though, and her friend Tabby. She was round earlier.”

  “What time was that?”

  Mrs Hilton glanced at her watch as though that might have stopped at the precise moment. “At least a couple of hours ago. I was reading and my concentration broke because Simone called out to her several times. I was back from work about three, I had soup then planned to read for the entire evening. All I know is that I’d been sitting in that chair for a while when I heard her shout and I was there a while afterwards too.”